Criminal Justice and Alternatives to Incarceration (ATI) · 4.1 Proportionality in Prosecution

Partially meets the criterion.

Mexico has a legal framework that formally distinguishes between personal use, possession, and conduct associated with illicit drug trafficking. The General Health Law establishes differentiated categories and criteria related to maximum personal-use quantities, while the Federal Criminal Code defines production, transportation, trafficking, commerce, and illicit supply offences.

INEGI statistical evidence allows observation of criminal justice patterns related to retail drug offences and simple possession. However, no disaggregated judicial and prosecutorial evidence was located to verify whether the legal distinction between drug users and persons involved in trafficking is consistently applied in practice. Therefore, the criterion is partially met: a normative distinction exists, but sufficient evidence of uniform application by criminal-justice institutions remains missing.